October Fun

 I love the Fall. There are so many fun activities for kids during this time of year. Here are the activities that we took advantage of this year. We decided that Cornbelly's was fun enough last year that it was worth a return visit. The girls loved this big slide. They each did it at least 5 times.

 They both loved the Princess play land also. Ashley was so excited because the dress that the worker chose for her had a butterfly on it.

 We walked through the corn maze, they played on a lot of wooden play structures, they played games, and rode a lot of little trains. We had a lot of fun and will probably go back again next year.

 I also took the girls over to a pumpkin patch across the street from the entrance to our neighborhood. It wasn't as big as Cornbelly's, but the pumpkins were a whole lot cheaper there. It was also a windy and cold night, so they didn't have all of the activities open. The girls had fun though and the owners were really nice so we will probably get our pumpkins from them again next year.

 This is on the hay ride out to the pumpkin patch.

 I took the girls to a Halloween party at our community rec center. Ashley was so excited about getting to meet the Chik-fil-A cow. That is her favorite place to eat and she always gets so excited when she sees anything related to Chik-Fil-A.

 And of course there was Trick or Treating on Halloween. We actually went down to Provo to trick or treat in the afternoon and then came home to do some more. Danny was nice enough to take them out in the evening since I was worn out from the afternoon trick or treating. Alyssa was really excited to hand out candy this year, so she didn't go out for very long in our neighborhood. It was nice having her around to answer the door and hand out candy. (in case you can't tell, Ashley was a spider and Alyssa was a bride/princess)

 Ashley got to go on her first field trip of the year with her preschool class. They went to a pumpkin patch(that's right, she did 3 pumpkin patches this year). She got to walk through the farm and look at all of the vegetables, play a little bit, and pick out a pumpkin.

 On Halloween, she also got to wear her costume to preschool. Here she is with her class.

A couple of days after Halloween, Alyssa had her first performance of Winnie the Pooh. Her part in the play was one of the narrators and her costume was a dove. She enjoyed doing the play and is asking for me to sign her up for the next one.

I am having the hardest time keeping motivated to update our blog. I will try to be better about it in order to have more posts that don't end up being so long. We are doing well and enjoying the season.

Catch Up

My camera stopped working properly for me about a month ago, so it has been hard to motivate myself to update our blog. Sorry for the long post, but here is what has been happening with us in the past month or so. We finished up our summer day trips with a trip up to Salt Lake City to go to Temple Square and City Creek. We mostly went to the church history museum, then walked through the temple grounds. Here is Alyssa showing some attitude in front of one of the statues.

 Alyssa started school during the last week of August. Here are a couple of pictures from the first day of school.

 

We went down to the Riverwoods a couple of weeks ago because they were having a Chalk Art festival. I thought the girls would love seeing the artists at work. Here are a couple of shots that Alyssa asked me to take of her. They must have been her favorites. 

 I think she liked the Tigger one because she is in the middle of practicing for a production of Winnie the Pooh at a little theater here in town. She loves theater and is looking forward to the upcoming play which will be the first week of November.
The leaves have been very beautiful up on the mountainside, so I took the girls for a hike up there. We talked Gawbie into coming along with us. These little girls were troopers, especially Alyssa, for what turned out to be a fairly difficult hike for even us adults. Here are some pictures we snapped at the top of the mountain.

 

 Last month was my grandmothers 93rd birthday so the assisted care facility she is in had a little birthday presentation for her. It was actually my aunt that did the presentation, but the facility provided cupcakes and ice cream afterwards. I was grateful to be able to go and am feeling more motivated to visit her more often now.

 The girls are excited for Halloween. Ashley wants to be a ladybug and Alyssa wants to be Sleeping Beauty. Now the hunt begins for the cheapest, nicest versions of those costumes.

Bugs Bugs Bugs!!!

 Anyone that has met Ashley, knows that she loves BUGS. She has loved the summer because she has been able to catch lots of bugs. Some of the most impressive have been the praying mantis she caught at the park...

the grasshopper she caught in our backyard...

 and the catapillar that she caught while we were on a walk on our trails(actually she caught like 25 catapillars over a three day period).

 She has also caught numerous rolly pollys, worms, slugs, snails, beetles, and even flys. It kind of grosses the rest of us out, but I've learned to look the other way.
When Alyssa started school again, we decided that it was time to give the girls their own rooms(they were keeping each other up too late which made for some grumpy girls in the morning). So we said goodbye to our nursery(which has been sitting unused for way too long)...

 and created this(the picture above is actually from the previous owners. We forgot to take a before picture with our stuff in the room. We did, however, have a crib set up and a changing table.)

 Ashley wasn't excited about sleeping in "the baby room" at first, but when we told her that she got to have whatever design/color in her room that she wanted she was a lot more excited about it. She chose some creepy/realistic looking bug wall stickers off of the internet and we found the leaf stalks at IKEA. We were all very pleased with how it turned out.

Wheeler Farm

On Monday, we went up to Wheeler Farm(no relation) in Salt Lake City. I had been there a long time ago, but didn't remember it much so I didn't really know what to expect. There were some animals there, but mostly just a lot of land and a lot of birds. That was fine though because we bought some bird food and the girls had a blast feeding all of the ducks, geese, and pigeons. I was suprised by how well they handled having so many birds crowding around them. Ashley was even brave enough to let a goose eat out of her hand. Alyssa wasn't quite so brave.

Hogle Zoo

I took the girls to Hogle Zoo this past week. Before we moved back to Utah, I was so sad to leave our St. Louis Zoo, not because it was any better than other zoos, just because it was free. I took the girls to the zoo all of the time while we lived in St. Louis and at the time I didn't realize that Salt Lake City had a zoo. When I found out about Hogle Zoo, I decided that we needed to go and check it out. It was a fun day at the zoo aside from it being 100 degrees out. Here are some of the things we saw...

They were feeding the rhino at the time that we wandered by so he was nice and close to us.

That is a monkey perched on the ledge there. It's hard to tell with the reflection.

 (The fake elephant sneezed on Alyssa. That is why she is holding her dress out like that)

The polar bear was my favorite part of the zoo. He was so active and playful. He never stopped moving and he would swim right up to the viewing glass, put his paws on it, and then push off while swimming his laps.

The highlight for Ashley was the ladybug she got to ride on towards the end of the day. They had chosen to ride on the train instead of the carousel, but when they saw the ladybug, Ashley got so excited. Alyssa decided that making her sister happy was a better choice than riding on the train. It was a fun afternoon. We ended the day with an animal show where the girls got to touch a turtle and an armadillo. We were all pretty warn out when we got home that night.

Sleeping Beauty

A few months ago I noticed that the Hale Center Theater in Orem was going to be doing a kids show. Since it was "Sleeping Beauty," one of Alyssa's favorite movies/princesses, I decided to take the girls. I invited Gawbie to go with us, but unfortunately she had something come up at the last minute so it was just me and the girls. They were so excited to go to the play. Here they are waiting for the show to start.

I got the tickets early enough that we were able to get front row seats. The actors/actresses were practically sitting on our feet during some parts. It was performed by kids as young as Alyssa up to 17 or 18 yrs old. The girl that played the wicked fairy was awesome. The prince was pretty funny too. They all did a really great job and the girls absolutely loved it. Ashley was scared of all of the bad people and wouldn't even look at them as we walked past them after the play was over. They were excited about meeting the princess though.

I don't know why they are both looking down in this picture. I must have taken the picture too late. It was a fun afternoon and I look forward to taking them to another kids show in the future.

Miner Family Reunion

 Last week, we were able to spend a week with my side of the family up at a YMCA Camp in Estes Park, Colorado. My parents found a huge cabin that was big enough for the 37 of us to stay, up on the mountainside above the camp. The view was amazing.

My parents arrange for us to get together every other year durning the month of July and we always have so much fun. Here are some of the highlights from this year's reunion. Minute to Win It Challanges...

Grandma's Bingo(this is done 2-3 times at every reunion). Here is the loot that Grandma hauled across the desert. Grandpa calls the numbers while Grandma supervises the picking of prizes(I think Grandma really enjoys finding new and interesting things to put in her prize suitcase. This year she found a bug encyclopedia for Ashley).

 Ashley enjoying the first prize that she picked out-whoppers.

 The girls loved having so many cousins around to play with. The older cousins in the family do so well with the littler ones. The parents of the little ones love having such great nieces and nephews. They are the best!  Alyssa's cousin, Caden, was nice enough to give her a turn shooting his bow and arrow that he picked out as a prize after Bingo.

 Here is Ashley showing off her pillow pet to Brigitte. We really miss having her here at the house since we got to have her here for over three weeks before the reunion.

 On the last full day at the YMCA camp, we had a huge family kick ball game. Danny was the star with his super-powerful kick that cleared the full bases. Alyssa was able to score a couple of times too, especially since the above mentioned cousins were nice enough to let her run the bases.

 After the kickball game Danny and Alyssa had a two-man race with Alyssa's older cousins, Cody and Nick.

 We also participated in river rafting, rock wall climbing, zip lining, tennis, miniature golf, frisbee golf, horseshoes, swimming, and a lot of card playing. Did I mention that it was beautiful there. The animals had no fear. We saw a lot of deer, a huge elk, and we even had a bear wander pretty close to the cabin. Ashley was in grasshopper heaven, too.

 This is a partial view of our cabin from higher up on the mountain. Danny and I spent a lot of time out on that balcony. My dad pulled out his telescope and hosted a star gazing party on that balcony one night, too.

On the final day of the reunion, we had to be out of our cabin by 10 am, so we decided to extend the family time a little longer and spend the day at a water park in Denver. The park was pretty crowded, but the girls had a blast. We stayed from almost opening until the park closed and then we all headed over to an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet for a last horrah. It was such a fun week and we already miss everyone. We are so grateful to my parents for all of the work they put into finding such great places and for all of the planning they do to make these reunions so much fun. This last picture didn't really fit in anywhere, but it was so cute so I had to include it.



 All of these photos were provided by my brother in law. Thanks for being such a great photographer, Dave!

Independence Day

We had a fun 4th of July this year. Danny managed to get out of another parade by getting a tennis invite from his grandfather. I promised Alyssa that I would take them to the parade down in Provo that morning. I had never been before, so I didn't know quite what to expect. We found an open spot not too far away from where we joined up with the parade route, so we grabbed it. We soon discovered why the spot was open still. For one, it was so HOT!!! As you can see in the picture below, Ashley is sitting with her back to the street because that kept her face out of the sun. I ended up having to take turns standing in front of the girls to block the sun from them. Had I been thinking, I would have brought hats, sunglasses and an umbrella with us.

Another problem with the spot was that it took a good 45 minutes for the parade to get to us from the starting time. Which meant that we were sitting there for a good hour waiting to see something.

 Another problem with the spot I chose was that we were sitting next to someone with really bad BO and a lady who chose to sit on the ground and expose her plumbers crack to us. The girls didn't notice it, but I certainly did. The parade did finally get to us. These state troopers were one of the first people to pass us.

We ended up leaving after about 30 minutes of parade when the girls realized that no one was going to throw candy to them and without the candy a parade is very boring. Me, my niece, and my nephew were all more than willing to leave when the girls requested it. We picked up my nieces roomate on the way home and brought her back to our house to enjoy the day with us. We played some games and BBQ'd. Danny and I got to go to Stadium of Fire for the second year in a row that night while my niece and nephew watched the girls and took them to our neighborhood block party/fireworks show. Stadium of Fire was awesome. The Beach Boys performed which is one of our favorite bands. We lost our voices from all of the singing and sat close enough to the fireworks to have ashes rain down on us. We even managed to get home over an hour earlier than we did last year. It was a fun day.